


Amnesia

by chronicAngel



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cognitive Dissonance, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-24 07:10:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20354443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicAngel/pseuds/chronicAngel
Summary: It's not quite an amnesia thing.He wishes it was an amnesia thing.





	Amnesia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [caffeinewentz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/caffeinewentz/gifts).

> You finally gifted me a fandom I usually operate in.

Sometimes Bruce wakes up and he doesn't remember who he is.

It's not quite an amnesia thing. It's more like he wakes up to Alfred pulling open the curtains and he tries to piece together if the streaky red sky outside of it is the sunset or the dawn. He tries to remember if he is justice or greed. He tries to remember if he is a socialite or a vigilante. He tries to remember if he is a grieving father or a grieving son.

He will go to a meeting at seven in the morning and wonder if he should be jumping out the window, whether to end his pain or end someone else's, if only for a moment before the black pit of Gotham tries to swallow every citizen whole again. Swallow every citizen like it swallowed his boy.

_His boy._ He wonders if his son was Jason Todd or Robin when he died. He wonders if they were even wholly separate entities the way that Bruce Wayne and Batman are. It pains him to think that every morning his son may have woken up and tried to decide if he should have been Jason Todd or Robin. Lonely little boy, angry little bird. All he ever wanted, in either life, was answers. Answers and approval. He wanted to have the solution to every problem, wanted Bruce to turn to him for them, and arrogant, idiotic Bruce Wayne was too prideful to ask for those answers and lost his son because of it. He was Jason's undoing. Not Willis Todd, not Sheila Haywood, not even the Joker. Bruce Wayne, or perhaps Batman. He isn't sure. It hardly matters. Though it can be hard to remember, he is both. Jason's death is the union between the two entities. His death is on their shared shoulders.

This morning, he has not woken up to Alfred cracking the curtains open to let the dimming sunlight hit him and asking him if he should prepare his suit, always leaving Bruce in a momentary daze as he tries to determine which suit the butler is talking about. When he glances at the digital clock on his nightstand, the red numbers glare _5:27_back at him. It'll be half an hour before Alfred is coming to wake him up from his morning nap. Half an hour of laying in the dark, thinking about all of the things he's done. All of the things Bruce Wayne has done. The things Batman has done. The things this failure of a father has done, no matter the name he uses.

He wishes it was an amnesia thing.

He wishes he could forget all of his sins. He wishes he could stop being so angry with himself. Or at the very least, he wishes he could redirect that anger outward. Be angry at Willis Todd. Be angry at Sheila Haywood. Be angry at the Joker. Be angry at the world. But ultimately, he cannot be angry with two dead people, and though the Joker was the catalyst of Jason's untimely death, wasn't it Bruce who guided Jason every step along the way down the path toward ultimate destruction and the loss of self? Wasn't it Batman? Yet again he selfishly dragged a child into his war and yet again he lost them.

It's just like Dick.

_Only it's nothing like Dick_, a part of him screams. He wonders if losing Dick was better or worse. He wonders if Jason would have chosen to leave, too, given enough time. He should have. He should have chosen to run far away and never come back. _Only he did choose that_, the same part screams. The part that wants him to suffer. The young Bruce Wayne. The grown Batman.

Alfred keeps telling him that he should call Dick. Try to make amends. He knows Dick wouldn't want it. He's killed a child, now. Beyond that, even if Dick wanted to speak with him, he couldn't bear losing another child. Dragging another son into his war only for him to be beaten half to death with a crowbar and left in a building with a bomb for being Bruce Wayne's son, or shot dead in an alley for being Batman's protege. _Wrong order_, he thinks, but is it really? They're the same person. The consequences are all on him.

He glances at the clock again. 5:42. He wonders, absently, how it has only been fifteen minutes. He wonders how fifteen minutes have already passed. He wishes time would stop, or skip over the fifty years between now and when he is surely meant to die. Because he cannot be killed as Batman. Cannot be shot in an alley as Bruce Wayne. Arrogant, prideful Bruce Wayne shaped himself to be the best and only the cruel God that took his son from him, took his parents from him, took everything immaterial, everything that _mattered_ from him, will be able to take him now.

He doesn't know how to be Batman, now. He doesn't know how to be Bruce Wayne either. He feels like the helpless child trapped in an alley with his parents' dead bodies, crying for help and hoping someone would hear him and run to a payphone to call the police. He is only a lost child, filled with anger not at the world or at Thomas and Martha Wayne's killer, but at himself. Angry that he couldn't do anything. And of course he couldn't, he was a child, but he could have tried _something, anything _damn it. At the very least, he could have died alongside them. He should have. If he'd died then, Jason would live now.

His parents would have liked Jason, he thinks. He would have hated them. They would have thought he was charming, a smart boy trying his best in school because he had never had a real opportunity to learn before, soaking up the world around him like a sponge. He would have thought they were asshole capitalists who were only adopting him because they thought they were better than him. They would have thought that he started at the bottom and made every effort to climb up to the top, a determined hard worker. He would have thought that mentality was condescending.

He grabs one of the pillows from underneath his head and pulls it over his face, debating whether to smother himself or scream into it. Instead, he decides to just lay there like that. The dim light is starting to hurt his eyes, anyway.

He tries to recall what he has to do today, but the times are all muddled in his head. He has a meeting as Bruce Wayne at 8:00 AM sharp, but he can't remember if that's in two hours or fourteen. If Gotham's sky ever got lighter than Metropolis' 6:00 PM, that'd probably help, but as it stands, the light outside could just as easily be morning or evening. He's always wondered if it's because of pollution or simply because Gotham itself can't decide whether to be Batman or Bruce Wayne. He thinks he remembers sunny days when he was a child. He also thinks he remembers sunny days from a week ago, though. His memories tend to get muddled.

He wonders when that started.

It hardly matters. The only memories that do matter constantly replay themselves behind his eyelids whenever he closes them for even a moment: His parents are shot in an alleyway. John and Mary Grayson fall from a trapeze in front of hundreds of people and their eight-year-old son. Robin-- _his son_\-- is trapped in a building blown up by the Joker. He closes his eyes now, under this pillow, and he has born witness to dozens of deaths, and they unfold before him once more.

He flinches when he hears his bedroom door open, the sound so soft that a normal person probably wouldn't hear it. Alfred, who is undoubtedly the person who is in the doorway, has the courtesy to wait a moment for him to catch his breath before asking, "Shall I prepare your suit, sir?" Bruce pauses again, always confused.


End file.
